Horses generally need to be secured in a stable or tied up in some appropriate manner when not being ridden or personally attended. This is necessary to protect the horse from injury or mischief, and to prevent the horse from running away.
The problem of how to readily secure a horse is most easily solved in a ranch environment, where stables, fences, and hitching posts are readily available. However, in the field, away from a ranch setting, no such facilities are likely to be available. Some other way must be found, therefore, to secure horses in a non-ranch environment, using a portable securing device.
The prior art discloses several horse securing devices. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 227,666 issued to Witt and U.S. Pat. No. 340,554 issued to Cannon show a horse securing tether connected to a fixed rope which is held in position by a plurality of posts planted into the ground. However, these designs are relatively complicated and non-portable. U.S. Design Pat. No. D391,694 issued to Eichhorn appears to show a more portable tethering system, however it too appears to require the coupling of the system to a rope--like the Witt and Cannon designs--through its use of a "snap hook."
There are additional problems with the devices of the prior art. A proper, portable horse tethering system needs to secure a horse to an appropriate stationary object such as a tree trunk or branch, in an orientation in which on the one hand the horse cannot readily move around and, on the other, in which the horse's head and neck are not being subjected to a constant downward pull. Thus, Cannon illustrates a system in which the weight is sufficiently light that it may be readily lifted by the horse, allowing the horse to wander relatively far from the point at which it was tethered and potentially to encounter trouble or injury. Moreover, none of the prior art systems disclose an adjustable length device, in which the length of the device between the halter attachment and the weight is adjustable--to accommodate different sized horses, as well as the securing of the system to either low-lying or relatively high stationary objects--so as to maintain the desired secure retention of the horse without downward pull on the head and neck.